The WiR: EU Could Force Facebook and Google to Pay EU Publishers, BuzzFeed Restructures To Push Video, Vevo Shoots For The Sky and Introducing Alively

In this week’s Week in Review: BuzzFeed restructures to put emphasis on video, Vevo seeks $500 million in funding and new private video format, Alively, launches. To receive a weekly summary of industry news and other VAN interviews and videos, sign up to the weekly Video Round-Up.

New EU Rules Could Enable Publishers to Claim Payment from Google and Facebook

News publishers might get stronger rights to demand payment from digital giants such as Google and Facebook in exchange for using their content, under proposed new EU rules aimed at supporting traditional media companies, according to The Guardian. The measures will be put out for consultation by the European commission in September and aim to strengthen the rights of those who create and invest in original content, including authors and musicians to record labels, broadcasters and publishers.

BuzzFeed Restructures News and Entertainment Divisions to Put Emphasis on Video
BuzzFeed is to split in two in order to separate its news content from its entertainment offering. The new structure will consist of BuzzFeed News as well as a new entity: BuzzFeed Entertainment Group (BFEG). The move is designed to cement the publisher’s position as a dominant player in the digital video space. In a leaked internal note, published by Vanity Fair, BuzzFeed CEO, Jonah Peretti, wrote:

“In this new structure, video won’t be the job of just one department. Having a single ‘video department’ in 2016 makes about as much sense as having a ‘mobile department’. Instead, it will be something we expand and embed across the organisation. As digital video becomes ubiquitous, every major initiative at BuzzFeed around the world will find an expression as video, just like everything we do works on mobile and social platforms.”

FT Reports Vevo’s Big Ambitions
YouTube rival Vevo is reportedly looking to raise $500 million in an upcoming round of funding, according to a report by the Financial Times and have brought on Goldman Sachs to help them do so. The popular music video hosting site plans to expand in many different directions, looking to expand internationally, launch a paid, subscription-style streaming service, and create original programming.

Jivox Introduces its New Personalised Video Ad System

Jivox, a platform for personalised digital advertising, have launched a new platform that enables advertisers to dynamically generate hundreds of thousands of potential creative variations. Some of the key features include ‘dynamic intra-video elements’ i.e Jivox say that up until now, the ability to personalise video advertising has been limited to elements external to the video file, but their platform is capable of dynamically generate different variations of the video itself using thousands of potential image, text and video combinations to customise predetermined portions of the video. The platform is also capable of delivering autoplay for dynamic video, support for dynamic out-stream video ads, dynamic video for social, and dynamic video overlays.

Alively Launches For Private Video LivestreamingAlively launched this week, a video platform where you can share livestreamed or recorded footage with select friends and family. Started by Vadim Lavrusik, a former Facebook product manager who worked on the company’s live video feature, and Ray Lee and Vincent Tuscano, both founders of Upfront Media Group, Alively aims to replace sending videos via SMS.

Facebook, Twitter and Others To Snatch £450m From News Industry By 2026
Social networks Twitter could cost the UK news industry around £450m in revenue by 2026, according to a report by OC&C. Online “disruption” has cost the industry 46 per cent of its turnover in the last decade and the traditional newspaper industry is forecast to lose up to half a billion more, or 10 to 15 per cent, in the next decade.

Facebook Seizes Header Bidding to Challenge Google in Programmatic Ad Sales
Facebook appears to be moving forward with plans to compete against Google for programmatic ad dollars. Its strategy is to bring advertiser demand from the Facebook Audience Network to the world’s largest publishers by integrating itself within a header bidding wrapper, a fairly new technology that lets Google’s competitors cut to the front of the line and bid on ad inventory.

Facebook’s Stock Projected To Climb, Announces New Video Blog
Facebook stock has the potential to climb by more than 20 percent over the next year given the growing advertising revenue among its platforms, according to a Barron’s report on Sunday. The social media giant, which traded at just under $124 a share on Friday, has seen a recent acceleration in growth in part because of its increasing mobile ad load, or, the number of ads Facebook can serve up to its users, the report said.

The company has also launched a new app, Lifestage, designed for people aged 21 and under to turn their life story into a video profile. The standalone iOS app has been created by a teenager, Facebook’s 19-year-old product manager Michael Sayman, to appeal to teenagers migrating from Facebook to more youth-friendly Snapchat.

In addition, the social media giant is testing a version of News Feed where videos autoplay with the sound on, in Australia.

Viacom New Boss ‘Same As Old Boss’ Says FT
Viacom has resolved its C-suite battle between management and the Redstone family that controls the company. Chief executive Philippe Dauman chose to step aside as multiple lawsuits between the company and Redstone were settled. The company has replaced him with Thomas Dooley, the previous chief operating officer. The FT did not mince its words, claiming Dooley and Dauman are cut from the same cloth.

Google Cracks Down on Interstitials, Ramps Up VRGoogle is cracking down on ‘intrusive interstitials’ again. The company announced the move, starting in January, in a blog post this week. Google said the change won’t affect “responsible” techniques, such as smaller banner ads or pop-ups in response to a legal sign-off.

WPP Reports Solid Growth
WPP reported like-for-like revenues up 3.5 per cent to $5.3 billion in the second quarter of 2016, compared with the same period last year. Second-quarter revenues grew 2.2 per cent in North America, with advertising and media investment management performing strongest, while healthcare was the most challenging sector. In the UK, revenue growth slowed from 4.7 per cent in the first quarter to 3.5 per cent in the second quarter, held back by concerns about the Brexit vote. Mr. Sorrell warned that uncertainty over the U.K.’s relationship with the EU could still lead the country into a recession.

The Guardian Sells Time Based Ad Campaigns
The Guardian is running its first digital ad campaign based on the amount of time people see the ads. Advertisers can now buy ads across the Guardian’s properties in guaranteed time slots of 10-, 15-, 20- or 30-second fragments, 100 percent in view.

Google Unveils ‘Nougat’
The latest version of Android, called “Nougat” has been released. However, it will be showcased on Nexus devices only for now.

RockYou Acquires Fanbread
Video ad network RockYou has acquired automated ad platform for influencers Fanbread as the company aims to improve its ad moneytization methodologies, according to VentureBeat.

Half Of The Most Shared Olympics Ads Of All Time Are From Rio Games
Half of the top 10 most shared Olympic ads of all time come from the Rio Games, according to research from Unruly. Channel 4’s “We’re The Superhumans” is the most shared ad of the Rio Olympics. The ad promoting the TV channel’s coverage of the upcoming Paralympic Games took gold after being shared more than 1.46 million times across social media, almost a million more than its closest competitor, Under Armour’s “Rule Yourself”, featuring Olympic legend Michael Phelps.

Unruly Unveils Vertical Video Format in APAC and Germany
Unruly has introduced a new mobile focused outstream video unit. The unit can be bought programmatically or via Unruly’s sales team and distributed across the Open Web.

Flite Introduces Velocity Vertical Video
Flite has unveiled Velocity, an ad building tool for vertical video. The company claims Velocity will remove the complexities and excessive costs of creating vertical video ads and allow brand marketers to build the ads themselves. Marketers can also add interactive elements and 1:1 personalisation components from the Flite CMP platform.

TubeMogul Opens in China
TubeMogul officially commenced its operations in China at an event in Shanghai this week, after spending time growing its Shanghai office to six people and its R&D office in Chengdu to 50. China now accounts for its second biggest development hub, after its US R&D office, which is said was a commitment to localising the technology for client and partner needs in China.

JICWEBS Roll Out Certification Process
JICWEBS has announced an independent review process this week. Companies, such as publishers, agencies and ad tech providers, can now sign-up to be reviewed through independent audit to verify their processes reduce the risk of fraudulent ads being served. Those successfully demonstrating that their processes apply JICWEBS’ anti-fraud Good Practice Principles will receive a certification seal.

80 Per Cent of Global Internet Traffic to be Driven by VideoNearly 80 percent of total global internet traffic will be driven by video in 2020, according to a new report from Nielsen Media Lab commissioned by HIRO Media. As ubiquitous as online video advertising has become, the report found hardly any correlation between engagement based KPI’s as CTR, VTR, viewability and actual consumer intent and ROI. However, the company found that content relevance did matter, relevant content increased consumer impact by 30 per cent.

DMR launches Yuyu OTT service
Digital Media Rights (DMR) has announced the launch of Yuyu in the US, an OTT video streaming service featuring content that is highly rated on IMDb.

Viceland’s Ratings Are Less Than Half Those of the Tiny Network It Replaced
Viceland launched in February, and a first look at the Nielsen ratings are interesting, revealing that while the audience is a lot younger than that of the channel it replaced, H2, it’s also a lot smaller. Viceland’s average 18-49 prime-time audience in July was just 45,000, less than half of the 92,000 that H2 averaged in the demo last July, according to Nielsen ratings obtained by The Wall Street Journal.

Commercial TV viewing increases as BBC declines
Commercial TV viewing in the UK increased by one minute per day year on year over the first half of 2016 boosted by BBC Three moving to online only. It is also an increase of seven minutes per day compared with ten years ago, according to Thinkbox. However, BBC viewing between January and June fell by two minutes to three hours and 34 minutes a day.

Mediaset Seeks Damages From Vivendi
Italian broadcaster Mediaset has initiated legal action before a Milan Court to enforce a contract signed in April with French media group Vivendi. Mediaset is requesting €50 million in damages for each month of delay in the implementation of the agreement as of July 25th, the date when Vivendi allegedly backtracked from the deal.

More Than Two Thirds of Consumers Have Never Bought a Digital Video
A majority of consumers (54 per cent) has never rented or bought a digital copy of a movie or TV show, according to GfK’s recent Home Technology Monitor. What’s more, the average digital media collection is much smaller than physical disc collections or even VHS collections have been on average.